Normal Life

Abstract

This book has two primary goals.First, it aims to chart the current trajectory of trans politics, one that I argue is recapitulating the limits of leftist, lesbian and gay, feminist, and antiracist politics that have centered legal recognition and equality claims.Second, it seeks to elaborate on the possibilities of what I understand as a critical trans politics-that is, a trans politics that demands more than legal recognition and inclusion, seeking instead to transform current logics of state, civil society security, and social equality.In developing this two-fold account of contemporary trans politics I aim to reveal the indispensability of trans or ga niz ing and analysis for both leftist thinking and left social movements.Additionally, I aim to address specific sites of intersection where trans activists and organizers can and are finding common cause with some of the most im portant po liti cal agendas of our time: police and prison abolition, wealth redistribution, and or ga niz ing against immigration enforcement.Further, I hope to show how critical trans politics practices re sis tance.Following the traditions of women of color feminism, this critical approach to resis tance refuses to take for granted national stories about social change that actually operate to maintain conditions of suffering and disparity.1 It questions its own effectiveness, engaging in constant reflection and self-evaluation.And it is about practice and pro cess rather than a point of arrival, resisting hierarchies of truth and reality and instead naming and refusing state vio lence. 2 Vari ous social movements have had to contend with why legal change in the form of rights has not brought the deep transformation they were seeking, why disparities in life chances have increased during a period when we have seen the elimination of formal segregation and the advent of policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, race, and disability.Before trans people sign on to what looks good about being recognized by law in ways that seem desireable

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